


Trapped (aka oh my god, they were roommates)

by paddingtonfan69



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, quarantine au, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23539801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paddingtonfan69/pseuds/paddingtonfan69
Summary: This will be fine, Myka tries to tell herself. They both have their own rooms. They both have things to do, places to escape to. It’s only for a month, then this Helena Wells will breeze out of her life as smoothly as she breezed into it.Claudia’s words echo in her head: What’s the worst that could happen?The answer to that question, of course, is a global pandemic.
Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells
Comments: 63
Kudos: 246





	Trapped (aka oh my god, they were roommates)

There is a formula for roommates. Math. One night, when neither of them can sleep, Claudia shows Myka a literal formula she made for them. There are graphs, compatibility categories, and different ways to average them out. It is, frankly, quite beautiful. 

Claudia and Myka are 92% compatible, according to the formula. The number makes Myka smile to herself. 

“Is this your way of saying you like living with me, Claude?”

“No, this is my way of saying I’m bored out of my mind,” Claudia responds, but she says it with a small smile that Myka catches.

She knows that sharing a two bedroom apartment with someone ten years her junior isn’t standard, but things had just fallen into place with them. For three years, they had been perfect, 92% compatible roommates, both spending hours on end alone until one of them would want the other’s brain to workshop a problem or complain about someone being an idiot. It was nice. It worked well for specifically them.

Then the trip happens.

“I can cover your rent for a month or two,” Myka says when Claudia tells her about her journey out West to meet the Silicon Valley people who keep hounding her to take a job.

“Ah ah!” Claudia says, “you made me give up petty theft, I’m now a morally intact person!”

“You literally stole that candy bar you're eating.”

Claudia puts down the candy, like that will prove anything. Neither of them say the unspoken, that if Claudia actually gets offered a tech job in California, then their 92% situation would have no reason to go on. 

“It actually works out perfect, Mykes. You know I don’t know the exact dates I'll be back yet. Plus, Steve has a friend-acquaintance-type-person who is moving to Boulder in March. So I figure she sublets my room until I come back.”

“Who is this person? Is she clean? What TV does she watch? How well does Steve know her?”

“Sheesh, cool the third degree. It’s just for a month. What’s the worst that could happen?”

The last thing that Myka wants is a stranger in her house. How is she supposed to know their compatibility? The thought of sharing space with someone she doesn’t know makes anxiety coil in her stomach. But there’s not much she can do. She knows that Claudia has her back, and they both know that Myka can’t go back to living alone, or, even worse, with Pete. 

Claudia leaves at the end of February with the subletter due to start a couple weeks later. Myka helps her pack up her Volvo, with an unexpected sadness at seeing her go, this weird child who has been sharing her space. She’s been telling Claudia for the past few weeks that maybe a road trip to California is not the best idea right now, with everything going on, but Claudia shrugs it off in her typical Claudia way that leaves no room for argument. So she leaves Myka alone for two weeks in their apartment, checking the news, texting Claudia to wash her hands, and not having anyone to talk to when she can’t sleep.

The day the subletter is due to start, Myka has a Bad Day at work. There are rumors of campus having to close soon, and all of her older colleagues are losing their minds about how to teach online. It would almost be amusing if there wasn’t another rumor, one that personally targets Myka. Another English professor is supposedly starting in the fall. Tenured. Myka has not been working for the last five god damned years on a tenure track to have someone come in from Oxford of all places to destroy her. And why the hell would someone from Oxford want to teach at the University of Colorado? It doesn’t make any sense, and Myka is powerless to stop it.

She considers storming into Artie’s office with a bang and a frustrated “why?” all through the day. When she’s finally leaving for the evening, her route out of the building takes her right past his office, so she pauses, listens at the closed door. This could be it. She could walk in there and tell Artie that years of hard work for this University shouldn’t be taken over by some Brit. 

Before she has the nerve to knock, the door opens. Instead of Artie coming out, a woman with long dark hair and perfect bone structure walks straight into Myka. 

“Oh dear, I’m so terribly sorry,” the woman says in a rich British accent, before backing up, and then looking at Myka straight in the eyes. Her eyes are a deep brown, and their intensity catches Myka off guard, before they flick down the length of her body quickly. “On the other hand, I don’t think I’m sorry at all.”

The woman smiles, eyes dancing, not hiding the fact that she just looked at Myka like she wants to do things to her that should not happen in University hallways. Myka swallows. She doesn’t remember the last time she was hit on. That’s not true, she just doesn’t remember the last time she was hit on and didn’t hate it. 

“Um,” she says, willing herself to think of something clever, but coming up empty.

“Tongue-tied?” The woman raises an eyebrow. 

Before Myka can respond, Artie comes out of his office in a rush. At his appearance, Myka snaps back to reality. Right. Artie. Artie and the new professor. The new _British_ professor. The accent of the mystery woman rings in her ears and she feels her eyes narrow. 

“Professor Wells, Professor Bering,” Artie says, eyes darting back and forth between them. 

“Bering,” this Professor Wells says slowly, a smile forming on her face, “Interesting.”

Not trying to make pleasantries, Myka turns squarely to Artie. 

“Can we talk?”

“Myka, I, uh, got a lot of meetings this evening. I’m sure you’ve heard.” He slips into mumbling mode. “Digitizing classes... pandemics… students going home... a mess.”

But clearly not enough of a mess to stop him from taking a meeting with Professor Wells here. Who is currently still staring at Myka with a wide grin on her face. 

“Myka Bering,” she says now, “what a coincidence.”

“Sure,” Myka says absently. This woman is not her priority. 

“Look,” Artie grumbles, “Myka, come see me on Monday, okay? We’ll chat.”

“Monday,” Myka repeats. It’s not ideal, but it’s something. 

Just like that, Artie’s off, still grumbling to himself and leaving the two women in the hallway to stare each other down. Myka doesn’t have time for heated eye contact or a devilish grin from this Wells woman. She has to meet her new roommate. No time for unsettling and attractive British women who want to steal her job. 

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Myka Bering,” the woman in question says, the same smile curling up her mouth. 

“Yeah, you too.” Myka says, then she’s down the hallway, trying to ignore the way she feels eyes on her all the way out of the building. 

Of all the days, this is not the one where she wants to meet whoever is taking over Claudia’s room. When she gets back from work, she tries her best to look presentable, noticing the frown that still creases on her forehead, the way she looks more shaken than she should be. She blames the podcast she listened to on the way from work about rapidly spreading diseases, not an encounter with a British woman in a hallway. 

There’s a knock on the door about four minutes after she arrives home. The new roommate was supposed to arrive at six, and it's only 5:53. Myka sighs, but tries to be optimistic. Early is good. Early people do their dishes and stick to their own rooms. 

The optimism dies as soon as she opens the door. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Not the warmest way to greet your new roommate, Professor Bering.” 

“You...” Myka, once again, is at a loss for words. “You’re Helena? Steve’s friend? Who is going to stay here for the month?”

“Observant and beautiful, what a combination.”

Myka narrows her eyes. At both this supposed Helena and at herself for feeling a hint of warmth at the word beautiful. It’s just been a while, she tells herself. That’s all. Helena’s eyes are still on hers as she finally steps back from the doorway to let Helena and her suitcase in. They stand in the living room for a second, with Myka once again unsure of what to say.

Finally, she settles on, “let me show you to your room, I guess.”

“You Americans really do know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

Myka almost smiles at this but she swallows it. No matter how charming this Helena is, she is still in America to take the job that Myka has worked for, she is still here in what should be Myka and Claudia’s space. She keeps her face neutral as she leads Helena into Claudia’s room.

“I’ll let you get settled,” she says and turns away quickly, before any more charm and cleverness can reach her ears. 

Back in her own room, she lays on the bed, trying not to listen to the sounds of Helena unpacking. This will be fine, Myka tries to tell herself. They both have their own rooms. They both have things to do, places to escape to. It’s only for a month, then this Helena Wells will breeze out of her life as smoothly as she breezed into it. Claudia’s words echo in her head.

_What’s the worst that could happen?_

The answer to that question, of course, is a global pandemic. 

*******

_Wassup it’s Claudia, leave a message. Or just text me, it's 2019, come on._

“First of all, Claude, it’s 2020, you really need to update your voicemail. More importantly, are you coming home? It’s getting bad out there, they closed the school, and everything's shutting down. I just think you need to be home. We can figure out the subletter stuff later, which… how does Steve know her, anyway? She’s… interesting. Anyway, please come home. And be safe. Don’t touch anyone. Bye.”

**March 14, 12:04 p.m.**

CD: my voicemail says to text yet she leaves a message lol  
MB: Claudia. Where are you? Come home.  
CD: im good!! staying in san francisco with todd who has a massssssive apartment. i should have taken that google job, people are makin bank out here.  
MB: Who’s Todd?  
CD: u know todd we met like three years ago   
CD: on the internet  
MB: Oh the boy whose face you’ve never seen but are now living with because of a quarantine?  
CD: u finally got it!!!! and it’s a very good face ;)  
MB: I still think you should come home.   
CD: mykes im good i promise  
CD: speaking of faces, the subletter… hot  
MB: Just stay safe, okay?  
CD: same to you and the hot roomie

_You’ve reached Professor Arthur Neilson, leave a message. Or don’t._

“Artie, hey, it’s Myka. I know we obviously can’t meet Monday because of everything, but I’d love to at least talk over the phone with you. I know you’re looking at Wells for the department opening, but... I’ve been teaching here for years, and I thought we had an understanding. Just please call me.”

_Myka Bering. Leave a message._

“Myyyyykeees, answer the phooone for your pal Peeeete. Claudia filled me in on the new hot British roomie thing and I am pissed I can’t go over there and see her. But I was thinking. Maybe you two take a walk and then I’ll happen to take a walk at the same time and run into my old pal Myka. You can still see a lot from six feet, you know what I mean? Anyway, call me, I’m bored out of my mind, gonna try to make doughnuts from scratch later, I’ll mail you some!”

_Hello you’ve reached the mobile of Helena Wells. If you insist, leave a message._

“HG, it’s Steve. Just wanted to make sure you’ve settled in okay. I would normally come by and say hi, but you know… here we are. Don’t be too harsh on the roommate, Myka’s really great. Oh, and don’t hit on her too much, I know she’s extremely your type. Just, best behavior, yeah? Miss ya, wash your hands!”

_Steve’s phone. Can’t pick up right now!_

“Steven, I don’t think you know how hard it is to not hit on someone who, as you so eloquently put it, is ‘extremely my type.’ Her bookshelf alone, my God. Don’t worry, though, she absolutely despises me. University politics, and all that. But all is well, darling, I’m only trapped in the same house with an absolutely gorgeous woman who hates my guts.”

***

Myka is actually pretty good at avoiding Helena for the first week. She stays in her room, trying to transfer her syllabi online, constantly answering emails from her students, annoying Claudia with her sanitation reminders. She even calls her sister. Eventually though, the four walls of her room get to her. It’s starting to remind her of the way she felt before Claudia moved in, right after Sam. Alone. 

She takes her book and decides to read in the living room for once. Helena’s not there, and Myka’s not sure if she feels relieved or disappointed. Either way, she settles in the armchair, falling into her worn copy of _Sense and Sensibility._

“Austen, I see.”

She looks up from her book to see Helena standing over her, cup of tea steaming in her hand. It’s a nice picture, she has to admit.

“It’s been a while, but I wanted some lighter fare, you know, with everything…” The unsaid of her sentence lingers, as it has in every conversation over the last week. 

Helena nods. “Classics are classics for a reason. Of course, you obviously know that.”

A different unsaid now hangs in the air between them of their mutual profession - their mutual want of what should be Myka’s. Myka knows there is so much to be anxious about, to be angry about, but for some reason she sticks on this. It’s easier to focus on this woman, sweeping in with a smile and inquisitive eyes, than the increasingly terrible things that exist outside of this apartment. 

Sensing something, Helena sits on the couch, and puts her tea down. She uses a coaster, which satisfies a small part of Myka. At least she’s not living with a barbarian. She turns to Myka, her face more serious than Myka’s seen it before. 

“Look, I wanted to clear the air between us. I didn’t fully grasp what the situation was with the University before coming here, didn’t know someone else was in the picture. I swear I don’t have nefarious or malicious intentions. I simply took a job.”

“Well,” Myka leans forward, “you simply taking a job means that I can't have what I've worked my ass off for for years.”

“Yes, I’m aware, now.”

“So you see why I’ve been…”

Helena’s mouth quirks up. “Hostile? Distant? Somehow avoiding your one and only roommate during a government-mandated stay-at-home order?”

Despite herself, despite the situation. Myka smiles back. She holds Helena’s gaze for longer than she should. She knows this is the part of the conversation where she should probably apologize, but she still doesn’t know if she’s actually sorry. Also, she gets the feeling that Helena is not someone who craves apology. She gets the feeling that Helena craves something else entirely. 

“How about this?” Myka says instead. “A truce. I’ll stop avoiding you until we can legally leave the house. But when we can, I’ll be gunning for that tenure. And when I want something, I normally get it.”

Myka’s unaware how that last sentence sounds until she utters it, and it causes Helena’s smile to grow and her eyes to flick down to her mouth, so quickly Myka thinks she might have imagined it.

“You’ll find, Professor Bering,” she says, voice lowering, “that I tend to get the things I want too.”

The air hangs between them once more, and Myka can feel how close Helena is to her, can see the ghost of freckles across her cheeks. They stay like that for a few moments, neither moving, until Helena holds out her hand to Myka. 

“Truce accepted.”

Myka shakes her hand. “Accepted.”

Their hands linger, neither pulling back. Myka, embarrassingly, feels heat rising to her cheeks from the mere contact of a handshake. She gets up, suddenly warm. 

“I need some fresh air.”

Helena follows her, standing as well. “I was just thinking of taking a stroll.” She pauses, assesses. “Unless, of course, this is your subtle way of telling me that you wish to be rid of my charming company.”

Myka rolls her eyes, but feels a smile creep over her face. 

“Let’s take a walk, Wells.”

It’s pleasant out, by Colorado in March standards, still a chill in the air, but the bright sun drowns most of it out. Myka finds herself enjoying the walk more than she thought she would, pointing out different facets of the neighborhood to Helena, who takes it all in with excitable curiosity. 

“It’s quite odd, isn’t it?” Helena observes, after Myka takes her past what is normally her favorite coffee shop, but is now closed. “How the world continues to spin, but we remain stuck?”

“No wonder you teach English,” Myka says with a laugh, but it dies out as they look at the world around them, and the words sink in. A couple walking their dog steps out of their path to walk into the middle of the street. The dog looks so happy, so eager, while the couple gives tight-lipped smiles to Myka and Helena. 

“I read an article,” Myka goes on, as they keep walking, “that said what we as a nation, or world really, are experiencing is grief.” 

“Ah yes.” There’s something new in Helena’s voice, a melancholy that wasn’t there previously. “The ground is falling out from under us. Nothing is real. Denial, anger, bargaining, et cetera. Grief.” 

Somehow, suddenly, Myka knows. She lowers her voice. 

“Doesn’t compare to the real thing, does it?”

Helena catches her eye, a look of knowing passing between them. Helena half-smiles then, and Myka half-smiles back.

“Seems title is not all we have in common, Professor Bering.”

“You know you can call me Myka.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

The glint in Helena’s eye is back, and Myka, surprisingly, missed it. They walk back to their apartment in comfortable conversation, starting at Jane Austen, which leads to Helena theorizing that at least half the authors of the last few centuries were secretly women. It’s nice to have someone to talk to about all this, not having to cover up her knowledge or dumb it down. 

By the time they return, the sun’s almost setting. Myka’s suddenly struck by the way the sun shines off Helena’s hair, the way it turns her skin gold in the evening light. 

“You’re staring, darling,” Helena says softly.

Myka, to her chagrin, blushes. 

“I like it.” Helena says with a wink, before pulling out her keys. 

That night, as Myka lays in bed, she wonders if it’s worse being stuck in the same living space with someone you hate or someone you’re attracted to. 

*******

Their evening walks become a routine. Myka’s not sure who initiates it, but every night, when she’s done with her classes, she and Helena wander the mostly empty streets of Boulder, talking about anything from books to films to their current hellish cultural moment. Through their walks, and their morning coffees, and after a few days, the puzzles, and games of chess, Myka finds out snippets of Helena’s life. 

She has a brother who she lived with back in England, until he had his own family and she applied to positions out here. She knows everything about London, Oxford, and the writers they spawned, specifically those of the 19th and early 20th century. She has a knack for chess, which Myka, who had always thought herself to be halfway decent at, finds out the hard way.

Over the next week, she finds that she still has three, big, lingering questions about Helena Wells’ life. One: Why would someone as accomplished as Helena need a roommate in a city as affordable as Boulder? Two: What was the grief she had experienced? Neither of them seemed like questions one could just ask, they were things that one got to know over time. And they had nothing but time.

The third, more embarrassing question that rattles in Myka’s head is, is Helena actually into women, specifically _her_? Myka’s not an idiot, she knows how to read a signal. She’s had men and women before who look at her in a certain way or find excuses to touch her arm more than they should. But none of these people were Helena Wells, who calls her “darling” and finds any excuse for an innuendo, and lets her hand linger on Myka’s when they make dinner. She does it so overtly that Myka can’t help but wonder if she’s being duped somehow.

On Friday, her last class is unbearable. It’s always been bad - a freshman seminar that fills a gen ed requirement on Wednesday and Friday evenings. Both her and her students’ last class of the week, it's remarkable when Myka gets anyone to pay attention. And that was when it was in person. Now, over video, Myka’s ask for thoughts on _Frankenstein_ falls on dead ears, or dead screens as it were. 

“Well, Professor Bering,” Myka hears from her doorway, “what better way to examine what it means to be a body longing to be free of someone else’s control than to be a woman in 1818.” 

Myka’s head flips to see Helena, lounging on her door frame holding two cups of coffee. She walks in and places one on Myka’s desk, coming into frame of her screen. 

“Who is _that_ , Professor Bering?” she hears a student, Abigail, say from the screen.

“Someone who did the reading,” Helena responds with a wink. 

After the last twenty minutes of class are spent persuading her usually apathetic freshmen that she does not have a hot British girlfriend, Myka joins said non-girlfriend in the living room, who is curled up on the armchair with a book. She glances at the cover and grins. 

“ _Fr_ _ankenstein,_ huh?”

“Classics are classics for a reason, right?” Helena says, smiling up at her. “How was the rest of the class?”

“You caused quite a stir, you know.” Myka flops down on the couch. “Who knew freshmen will actually pay attention when a mysterious gorgeous woman shows up?”

“Well, then they should always be paying attention,” Helena says with a glint in her eye. 

Myka feels her cheeks flush as they have been doing quite frequently for these past few days. Her head is lying on the arm of the couch that faces the chair, and she sees Helena hovering above her now, grinning like the cat who caught the canary. Myka could do a lot of things at this moment. She could ask Helena if any of these things she says mean anything, or she could reach up and drag her face downward to meet her own. Instead, as she always does, she deflects. 

“I’m not mysterious.”

This causes Helena to let out a laugh. 

“I’m not!” Myka insists. 

“Darling,” Helena drawls, “I’ve been living with you for a fortnight now, and I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“Do we really want to play that particular game?”

Myka sits up. “Helena. It’s Friday night in week two of a quarantine. What else do we have to do?”

“Fair point.” Helena tosses the book aside. Straightens. Myka wonders if she’s made a mistake on this one.

“Hold up.” Myka sits up rapidly, “I'll need to ask you some questions too. And we’ll need something to drink.”

“Wonderful.”

Which is how they end up sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of gin in between them. Myka feels like she is still in college, if she was someone who did fun things with beautiful people in college. 

“Rules are,” Helena pronounces, “you answer the question or you drink.”

“And we each have to answer the same question. Or an equivalent one.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Helena pours them two glasses and Myka wonders if this idea is as terrible as her nerves think it is. 

They start off easy. 

“Middle name?”

“Ophelia.”

“What a tragic name to bestow upon a child.”

“Trust me, I’m aware. You?”

“George.”

“George?”

“George.”

“So you, a professor of 19th century literature, are named HG-”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, yes, I’ll drink just to shut you up.”

“Those aren’t the rules!”

“Yes, but who am I to waste perfectly good gin?”

“Okay, next question. How they hell do you know Steve?”

Helena’s wicked smile returns. 

“Amsterdam.”

“What were you doing in Amsterdam? Wait, what was Steve doing in Amsterdam?”

Helena laughs. “We both happened to be on holiday at the same time. Steven was studying abroad and I was… well, I was in a rather destructive phase of my life, let’s say. We happened to be sitting near each other at a bar in the city and an incredibly rude gentleman kept badgering poor Steven so I pretended to be his girlfriend, of all things. Anyway, it was Amsterdam, so we decided to procure several items and ended up having a lovely night. Thrilled we still stay in touch.”

“Procure some items?”

“Drugs, darling.”

“I figured. Which ones?”

Helena smirks and reaches for the gin.

“So how do you know Steve?”

“He’s Claudia’s friend. Sorry we can't all drop acid in Amsterdam."

"Never say never, Professor Bering."

About half an hour in, when they each have a comfortable amount of gin in their stomachs, the questions take a turn. 

“Alright, Professor, best shag?”

“I’m honestly surprised it took you this long to ask.” 

Maybe it’s the alcohol or just how much Myka is enjoying herself, she finds she isn’t embarrassed by the sexual nature of the question. Helena raises an eyebrow at her and holds up the gin as an offering, or more likely, a game of chicken. Myka refuses. 

“It would have to be a tie,” she finally says. 

“I don’t believe in the concept of ties, but do go on.”

Myka glares at her. 

“You’re lucky you’re getting two stories here. First would be Jamie Clarkson, grad school. First woman. It was very much an ‘a-ha’ moment you know? That _this_ is what sex can be like.”

“Oh I’m well aware,” Helena’s voice is thick, low, egregiously sexy, “of what a woman’s touch can do.” 

A smile curls up her lips and Myka feels a similar one form on her own face. Well, that answers that. She has half a mind to knock the gin bottle off the table right now, reach for Helena, and do what she has been fantasizing about for the past week.

“But you had a tie,” Helena says, tearing Myka out of her thoughts, “who’s the lucky second person?”

Great. Nothing kills the mood quite like telling the wildly attractive person across from you about your dead boyfriend that wasn’t even really your boyfriend. Myka considers drinking on this one, but she feels the need to be honest overpower anything else.

“Sam Martino, about four years ago now. He was probably the first person I actually loved, so there’s that.” She doesn’t look at Helena while she goes on. “He was married, but ‘separated,’ so there’s that. And he died about six months into whatever we had so… there’s that.”

She takes a long drink of her gin, before meeting Helena’s eyes. She finds not pity in them, but understanding.

“Grief,” Helena says simply.

“Grief,” Myka repeats. Then, for some reason, she keeps talking. “That’s why I live here, you know? I’d lived alone up until then, but being alone after you lose someone it’s - ”

“A death sentence.”

Myka breathes. “Yeah. It’s brutal. My friend Pete forced himself to move in with me after a few months, and he helped, but was also a terrible roommate.” She laughs at the memory of yelling at the top of her lungs when she saw what he did to the kitchen. “And then Claudia came around. She was a former student of mine, even though lit was not her thing. We actually became friends after she tried to hack into the school's system to change her grades. But we ended up having a lot in common, and when she needed a roommate, I was there. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“Ah,” Helena says, “I see why you were the way you were to me. I was a stranger encroaching on that.”

“Well, you aren’t a stranger anymore.” 

“No, it appears I’m not.” 

They don’t keep playing the game after that. It doesn’t feel right to ask Helena about her best sexual experience after spilling her guts about Sam. So she puts away the gin and cleans the glasses, brushes her teeth and heads to her room. When she glances at the clock and sees that it’s only eight, she’s surprised. Time moves strangely now. 

“Myka?” she hears from her doorway. She thinks it might be the first time Helena has used her actual first name. “I just wanted to say, in the name of fairness and reciprocity…” She’s looking down at her hands, not at Myka, and she seems more withdrawn than she was earlier.

“You don’t have to…”

“My daughter. Six years ago. That’s why I can’t live alone either.”

Myka swallows. A daughter. She can’t even begin to imagine. 

“Helena…”

“Trust me, I’ve heard all the words. I just… thought you should know, that’s all. It never really goes away, this grief. It’s always there. It's its own form of quarantine, as it were.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Myka says, “I know it’s not easy.”

“Most true things aren’t.”

And with that she’s gone, gently shutting the door behind her. 

That night, when Myka tries to sleep, she can’t. She thinks of ghosts, and Sam, and a young girl that looks like Helena. And for the first time since the aftermath of Sam’s death, she feels a want of a different kind. A want to hold and to be held. 

*******

By the time she walks into the kitchen on Saturday morning, Helena is gone. There’s a pot of coffee brewed in the kitchen and a small note next to it. 

_Popped out to the shop, enjoy the coffee xx HG_

Myka smiles at the initials, the note, the coffee, the domesticity of it all. She finds that the heaviness of conversation last night doesn’t weigh on her as much as she thought it would. She finds, instead, that a part of her misses the presence of the other woman. Which is absolutely insane. They have spent sixteen days in the same apartment, unallowed to see anyone else, and Myka misses her. Christ. 

When her phone rings, it jolts her out of her love-struck teenager melancholy. She checks the ID, hoping irrationally for Helena. She sees, instead, a FaceTime from Pete, and smiles. A perfect distraction. 

“Wasssuppppppppp,” Pete practically yells at her through the phone. He has the camera pressed up against his face, so she can see a crumb of whatever he had for breakfast on his chin. 

“Gross,” she mutters.

“So,” he says, pulling the camera to a respectable distance, “where’s the hot roomie?”

He wriggles his eyebrows at her. She sighs. So much for a distraction. 

“She’s grocery shopping.”

“Aw, man. I wanted a glimpse, why do you think I called?”

“To catch up with one of your oldest friends, maybe?”

“Nah, I’m isolated, I need something interesting to keep me going.”

“Sorry my hot roommate couldn’t provide you entertainment.”

“A-HA,” Pete yells so vehemently his camera shakes, “she _is_ hot.”

Myka rolls her eyes, but can’t help smiling a little bit. It is Pete, after all. 

“Yes, some people would describe her as maybe attractive.”

“Oh my god, Mykes, you’re blushing.”

“I am not!” 

She looks at her small rectangle in the corner of the phone, to see that her face is, unfortunately, a few shades redder than usual.

“Kelly, come here, Myka’s blushing.”

“Wait a minute, you’re with Kelly? I thought you were isolated!”

“Yeah, I’m isolated with Kelly. You know me, I can’t quarantine alone.”

“Okay fair, but how is she dealing with…you?”

“First of all, rude. I wasn’t that bad of a roommate.”

Myka raises her eyebrows at him. He flips her off. 

“Secondly,” he continues, “when you live with someone you love, it’s easy to put their needs ahead of yours.”

“Wow Pete, that was surprisingly sweet.”

He grins. “Anyway, you’re distracting me from the point, which is that you are into your new hot roommate.”

Before she can reprimand him, she hears a key, and the door opens to reveal Helena carrying several grocery bags, with a scarf tied around her mouth. She’s clearly out of breath as she puts the bags down and takes off the scarf to reveal a wide dazzling smiling. 

“Good morning, darling,” she says, “Did you sleep well?”

“Holy shit, Mykes, is that her? Did she just call you-” 

Myka hangs up the phone. Helena glances at it, grinning. 

“Should my ears be burning?”

Myka, whose cheeks she knows are burning themselves, shakes her head. Helena’s smile widens.

“Can I help?” Myka asks, desperate for a subject change. 

“I’m afraid not. I wouldn’t want to contaminate you.” Right. “But I’d enjoy the company while I try to fight off any germs that may have stowed away in the apples.”

So Myka sits, sips her coffee, and watches Helena take Clorox wipes to the groceries. She is very thorough, with graceful hands carefully decontaminating oat milk, maple granola, a massive package of Twizzlers. As each item is revealed, cleaned, and put away, Myka realizes each one is something that she loves. 

“Helena, you didn’t have to-” she starts, but Helena interrupts. 

“I think, in fact, I did. I know there are certain roommate conventions, but it’s absolutely asinine to force each of us to go to the supermarket separately, don’t you agree?”

“Yeah, it’s just… how did you know all the stuff I like?”

Helena grins. “I’m smarter than I look. I notice habits, can see what’s in the fridge, make deductions.”

“Okay, Poirot,” Myka says with a grin as she sits back and watches. She has Pete’s voice in her head, _when you live with someone you love, it’s easy to put their needs ahead of yours._

She tries to cast aside the thought, but the rest of the weekend unfolds in a haze of what can only be described as domesticity. Helena insists on showing off a hollandaise sauce recipe, so she makes them a variation of eggs benedict, with Myka acting as sous chef. They spend the afternoon watching _Succession,_ one of the only TV shows of recent years that Myka has actually watched, and wants someone to talk about it with. And wants that someone to be Helena. 

“It’s just _King Lear,_ ” Helena says, twenty minutes into the first episode. 

Myka grins. “Why do you think I showed you?”

They take a longer walk than usual that Saturday, and the same on Sunday, walking on the outskirts of closed parks as the sun sets, reminiscing of what they used to do on weekends, what they would do now if they could. Small things; libraries, coffeeshops, movie theaters. Myka vows to show them all to Helena when this is over. 

By Sunday night, when they sit on the couch, reading their Shelley and Austen respectively, Myka realizes they’ve spent almost every moment this weekend together. She can’t remember the last time she spent a full weekend with someone. Even when Claudia lived here, they’d normally have times where they were off doing their own things, or staying comfortably in their separate rooms. 

Of course, now there is less chance for separation, no places either of them could really go. Even so, Myka knows that even if the world was back the way it used to be, she wouldn’t have wanted to be apart from Helena. Christ, she has it bad, she realizes as she stares at the same page of _Sense and Sensibility_ for fifteen minutes, taking in nothing. All she thinks about is how Helena is a few inches from her, and how all weekend they’ve behaved exactly like a couple, except for a few key details. 

She hasn’t even checked her work email all weekend, which is a first for her in years. At the thought, she pulls out her phone, just to prove to herself that there are some constants in the bizarro world she lives in now. Most the emails are from students asking for extensions or with questions about office hours, all of which she can answer tomorrow. Then, she gets to an email from last night.

**March 28, 7:15pm.  
From: Arthur Neilson <a.neilson@colorado.edu>  
To: Helena G. Wells <hgeorgewells@gmail.com>  
Cc: Myka Bering <m.bering@colorado.edu>  
Subject: Meeting**

Hi - a couple weeks late, but let’s have a call Wednesday at 2pm to discuss positions.

-A

“A CC!?” Myka bolts upright, the comfort of a few minutes ago forgotten. “A fucking CC??”

Helena lowers her book to look at Myka with concern. Myka practically throws the phone at her. Helena quirks an eyebrow but reads the email.

“He really isn’t one for pleasantries, is he?”

“That’s not the point, though. The email is to you, and I’m just… an afterthought. Goodbye to any dreams of tenure. Enjoy it.”

Helena carefully sets down her book on the coffee table and turns her body on the couch to face Myka. 

She regards her for a moment then says, purposefully, “anyone who thinks of you as an afterthought is an absolute fool, Professor Bering.”

Myka doesn’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the way Helena’s eyes are unflinching, never leaving her face. Maybe it’s the way an undercurrent of rage and this new feeling of comfort are battling out for top billing. But it’s probably the way that Helena’s presence this month has lit something in Myka’s gut that she hasn’t felt in years. So she looks back at Helena’s dark eyes, her smooth cheeks, and her slightly open mouth, takes her face in both hands and kisses her. 

She feels the shock in Helena’s mouth at first, then feels a smile in it, and then, she feels everything she’s wanted to for the past two weeks. Helena’s hand comes around to the back of Myka’s neck and she’s kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, and Myka feels herself falling into her, all thoughts gone from her mind except needed to feel more of this. 

An unfamiliar sound escapes from the back of her throat as she holds Helena’s head closer and opens her mouth, wanting Helena to take all that she can. Helena doesn’t disappoint. Her fingers rake through Myka's curls as she runs her tongue along Myka’s lower lip and Myka feels heat slide from her mouth down the length of her body. She leans into it, pulling Helena down so all of her is touching all of Myka. 

“Myka,” Helena whispers into her mouth at the contact. 

The utterance of her name makes Myka gasp, makes her pull Helena closer, makes her hand reach out for the bottom of Helena’s shirt and slide upward against the smooth skin of her stomach. She hears something that can only be described as a whimper come out of Helena’s mouth, and her hand chases the sound, revealing the heat of Helena’s skin, the way it moves under her palm. 

There’s no reason to wear a bra on a Sunday evening in quarantine, so there’s nothing to stop Myka’s hand from curving around Helena’s breast, nothing to stop her thumb brushing over a nipple, nothing to stop the moan that escapes Helena’s mouth at the contact. Myka’s hips involuntary rise at the sound and Helena’s meets hers firmly, purposefully, right where Myka needs them to be. 

For the first time since Myka kissed her, their lips break apart, and Helena stares down at her, lips parted, pupils dilated. It’s the most gorgeous thing Myka’s ever seen. Helena moves her hips against her again, eyes not leaving Myka’s, as Myka lets out a low moan.

“You are absolutely stunning, Myka Bering,” Helena tells her, and Myka feels the words in her swollen lips, in the quick beating of her heart, and in between her legs where Helena’s strong thigh is pressed against her. 

“I want you,” she says breathlessly, “please, Helena.”

A wide, wicked grin spreads on Helena’s face, as she leans down and says, “if you insist.”

She descends on Myka again, and Myka knows she’s done for. She knows it in the way Helena plants open mouthed kisses on her neck, following them up with a scrape of her teeth. She knows it in the way Helena finds a rhythm with her hips, pressing hard into Myka, the way her hands impatiently push up Myka’s shirt, craving contact that Myka is more than happy to give. 

Myka finds herself panting Helena’s name, lifting her hips over and over again in the plea for her. Normally, during her first time with someone, there is some reserve in how she acts, some sense of caution with a new person. There’s none of that now, only a need for Helena to touch every inch of her. 

Helena obliges. She kisses her way over Myka’s collarbone, then down to her breasts, her tongue and teeth working in ways that make Myka moan and gasp and feel down to the tips of her toes. Her hand finds her way down between Myka’s legs, over her sweatpants, and Myka’s knows Helena can feel how wet she is through the fabric. 

“Please,” she repeats, and feels Helena’s smirk against her chest. She doesn’t care. “Please, Helena, touch me, I need you.”

She feels an intake of breath at the words and knows that Helena loves hearing them just as much as she loves saying them. Her hand goes up to the elastic of Myka’s pants and slides beneath them. She grins. 

“No underwear, Bering?”

Myka lets out a laugh, which quickly turns into a gasp, because Helena’s fingers are finally, _finally_ , touching her where she’s wanted her to for what feels like forever now. Despite her teasing earlier, her hands are sure and fast, fingers sliding into her easily and confidently. Myka moans Helena’s name at the contact, over and over again until she doesn't know what words are, just knows the feeling of Helena consuming her. She feels how close she is, and doesn’t care that it’s so soon, only cares that Helena doesn’t stop touching her. Right before she comes, Helena brings her face up to look at Myka’s, a portrait of wanting. She watches as Myka falls apart under her touch, and Myka feels her gaze throughout. 

“Holy shit,” she says, when she can finally get her words back. 

“Eloquent as always, Professor Bering.” 

Helena’s eyes sparkle down at her and Myka laughs with whatever remaining breath she has. 

“I guess you rendered me speechless, Professor Wells.”

“I suppose I did.”

Helena grins, and moves her fingers slightly, still inside of Myka, causing Myka to gasp. 

“Now, you’re not playing fair.”

Before Helena can respond, Myka decides to level the playing field. She slides her hand between them, over Helena’s stomach and under her pants to find her hot and wet and wanting. 

“Fuck,” Helena moans at the first touch of Myka’s fingertips to her. 

“Who’s eloquent now?” Myka asks with a smile, before Helena moves her hand again. 

Myka groans and presses further into Helena, who gasps her name, then they are both touching each other and reacting, each sound fueling Myka’s want. It’s frantic and desperate the way they move against each other, a pressure mounting between them that Myka feels in her whole being. 

They don’t break eye contact the whole time, and Myka revels in it when Helena’s mouth falls open, releasing a ragged moan as her body tenses. It’s absolutely gorgeous, the way she moves. It makes Myka follow close after, open mouthed and smiling under Helena’s gaze. 

She presses a kiss to Helena’s jaw after, to her neck, her collarbone. Helena smiles at the touch before leaning down to capture her lips. They kiss slowly, languidly, with nowhere else they need to be, until they finally stop, Helena resting her head in the crook of Myka’s neck. 

“You know,” Myka finally says, “if you told me two weeks ago we would end up here, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Darling, if you have said it took me two weeks to get someone as gorgeous as you into bed, I wouldn’t have believed you either.”

Myka finds herself grinning. 

“Technically, you still haven't gotten me into bed.”

Helena grins back. 

“Well, we simply must change that.”

***

For the first time in her academic career, Myka snoozes her alarm. She has never been a snoozer, never one to put off the prospect of waking up, of throwing off her routine. But she has also never woken up with someone quite like Helena pressed into her, warm and naked beneath the blankets. So Myka presses snooze, and lets her hand fall onto Helena’s back, stroking the smooth skin there, until she dozes off, only to be awoken by her alarm again.

“Can you please turn that ghastly thing off,” Helena says, voice muffled by Myka’s chest. 

“I do have a class to teach.”

“Excuses, Professor.”

She leans up to kiss her and Myka melts into it until her alarm goes off again, and she pries herself from Helena to head toward the shower. When she comes back to the room, Helena has fallen back asleep, so she quickly puts on a shirt and takes her laptop into the living room for her classes. 

Her Monday morning class, despite the time of it, is Myka’s favorite to teach. It’s a senior seminar: Current Political Realities Seen Through Science Fiction, one that she begged Artie to let her teach starting last year. There are only 15 students and the conversation flows between them all easily, discussing _The Left Hand of Darkness_. If Myka is smiling more than usual today, it is because of her love of Le Guin, and no other reasons. It is definitely not because someone has sat down on the very couch where certain events happened last night, casually drinking a cup of tea and observing her.

“Quite an excellent seminar,” Helena says once her class is over. 

Myka ducks her head, smiles. “You think so, huh?”

“What was that you said at the end there, that one can read a theme of government-mandated loneliness into the text, and it’s hard not to see the comparison in the odd world we find ourselves in today? Absolutely brilliant.”

“Something like that.”

“If I had had Professor Myka Bering in my Uni days, I would have learned a great deal more I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Myka says, getting up and walking over to her, “now you’re just flattering me.”

Helena grins, slowly. 

“You’re right. If I had you as my teacher, I wouldn’t be able to focus on literature at all. And you know how much I love literature.”

Myka’s now standing above Helena, who looks up at her with eyes that almost take Myka’s breath away. That and the way she says the word “literature.” Myka slowly takes the cup from Helena’s hands and places it on the coffee table. Then she slots each one knee on either side of Helena until she is essentially in her lap, looking down on her. 

“Professor Bering, how forward of you,” Helena jokes, but her tone is breathless, eager. 

Myka kisses her, no pretenses, open mouthed and wanting, reveling in the feel of Helena reacting beneath her. She kisses and touches and breathes into Helena until she can’t think anymore. She pulls away to rest their foreheads together. 

“I have office hours,” she pants against Helena’s face. 

“Oh, sod office hours.”

Myka grins, presses a quick kiss to Helena’s cheek and climbs off of her. 

“You’ll just have to be patient on this one.”

“When have I ever been known to be patient?”

“I’ve only known you for eighteen days.”

“So you’ve been counting, darling?”

It goes like this for the next two days.

Myka works, teaches, comforts students from her laptop, who panic about grades and research, because it’s easier to panic about academia than what’s going on outside. So Myka sits with them, talks about books with them, until they calm. It’s a small way in which her work feels useful.

Whenever she takes a break from work, it is like a string ties her to Helena, who’s always waiting for her. They still go on evening walks, taking advantage of the empty streets to make out in public spaces. When they come home, they tear their clothes off each other like it’s been months since they’ve had each other, not hours. Myka memorizes details about Helena; how she takes her tea, the look on her face when she’s about to solve a puzzle, the taste of the hollow where her hip meets her stomach, the noise she makes when Myka tastes her there. 

Monday passes in a daze of touches and smiles and literary analysis and Tuesday follows much the same. They don’t look at the news either day, don’t talk about the situation outside their apartment, or their impending meeting the next day. In all honesty, Myka almost forgets about Artie’s email, except for the fact that Artie’s email somehow triggered this new reality. 

On Wednesday, Myka has a class, then a gap, then Artie’s meeting, then her dreaded Freshman seminar. During the gap, her and Helena sit in the kitchen, eating leftover pasta together. The two of them have gotten good at comfortable silence, but this isn’t exactly that. 

“Are we going to talk about it?” Myka finally asks. 

Helena’s mouth quirks up. 

“About my mediocre alfredo? If we must.”

“You know what I mean, Helena.”

Helena puts aside her bowl and leans across the table. 

“Whatever Arthur says, I hope it doesn’t come between what we have here. Our truce, if you will.”

Myka feels herself relax, feels a smile curl on her face. 

“I think this is the hottest truce I’ve ever been in.”

“Likewise, darling.”

Helena’s eyes dance at her and Myka feels her anxiety drain. They even have fun setting up the call, positioning themselves across the living room with headphones in, so Artie will have no idea they are in the same room. Myka laughs, imagining his shock to see the two of them sharing the same screen. 

Myka preps for the worst. She’s not stupid. She knows that a person coming in from somewhere prestigious as Oxford is far more likely to get higher pay and tenure than she is. It’s unfair, part of a system that she has to fight to get anywhere. She glances across the room. But if it has to be anyone, she’s glad it’s Helena. 

Artie’s voice is rougher than usual through the screen. Myka surprises herself by having missed him, this short, irritable man who had been a constant in her life for the last five years. 

“Okay, thank you both for taking the time. Let’s make this short, yes? And don’t shoot the messenger.”

Myka feels a flutter of anxiety return. She looks up from Helena on her screen to Helena across the room, who meets her eyes. Here they go. 

Artie starts in on how the University, along with everything else in the world, is short on cash, which Myka knew. He talks about Professor Caturanga leaving after this semester, which Myka knew. How Helena was brought in to teach summer classes and see if she was a good fit for his replacement, which Myka also knew. 

“But here’s the kicker,” Artie says, “enrollment has been dropping, and the money is all... bad right now. I’ve tried to fight it, but there will be no tenured position opening in the fall. I know both of you were trying for it, but...” He trails off.

Oh. Myka’s eyes shoot up to meet Helena’s but Helena is focused on the screen, face unmoving.

“So,” she says coldly to Artie, “you tell me to come to Colorado for a job. I go to Colorado for a job. I get _trapped_ _in Colorado_ for a job because of a global pandemic. And now, when or _if_ we come out of it, I will not get said job. Is that correct?”

“Look, Helena, Professor Wells. I don’t think any of us could have anticipated this. And there are still a couple summer classes, and hopefully one or two for you to teach in the fall.”

“Right,” she says, voice hard. “Lots to think about. Thank you Arthur.”

She shuts her laptop forcefully. Myka starts the sudden movement. At the whole situation. At the venom in Helena’s voice when she said _trapped in Colorado._ She can’t help but feel hurt rising in her throat. 

“Myka, I’m sorry, I know you wanted that-” Artie starts but Myka cuts him off. 

“Gotta go, Artie.” 

She shuts her laptop too, walking over up to Helena who stands at the hall closet, grabbing her scarf and jacket, not looking at Myka.

“Helena, hey, talk to me.”

Helena puts on her jacket stiffly, laces up her boots. 

“What’s there to say? I’m going on a walk.”

Myka knows that she should say something comforting, knows that Helena has just had a rug pulled out from under her. But the combination of the hurt from Helena’s remark and the fact that walks have always been for the two of them, not for Helena alone, makes her not want to say anything nice at all.

She spits out, “Is the thought of staying here with me truly so horrible?”

Helena starts at her words, like she forgot Myka was even here. Myka thinks she’s going to respond, but she doesn’t. Her face is unreadable as she looks at Myka with those dark brown eyes. Then she drops her gaze, goes to the door and simply walks out of it. 

As soon as the door slams behind Helena, Myka deflates onto the couch. She tries to wrap her head around what just happened. So that job that she was deeply jealous of is now off the table. And that means Helena moved here from England for a few summer courses, and nothing permanent. She gets that it’s not an ideal situation, but it’s really not so bad, is it? _She’s_ not so bad, is she?

Myka wonders if she’d read it all wrong. Did Helena look at her the way she did and touch her the way she did, take long walks and listen to her like she was smart and interesting just because she was _trapped in Colorado_ with her? Someone like Helena, with those eyes and that smile and that accent, could have anyone she wanted if they weren’t forced to stay in the same house. Myka feels something in her throat that feels uncomfortably like tears. She fights them off. If Helena doesn’t want anything to do with her, that’s fine. She doesn't need to have anything to do with Helena either. Three weeks ago, she’d never heard of Helena George Wells, she can go back to that. 

She gets up off the couch. She can’t sit there. Not in the first place where she kissed Helena. Not where they’ve sat every night since and given way to what their bodies want. She takes her laptop to her room and shuts the door. This is how it will be, then. 

She spends the rest of the time before her dreaded seminar reading the news she’d been neglecting for the last week. It’s hard, it hurts, but it’s easier to feel the hurt of the world than to the long dormant kind that’s blooming in her chest. She reads about a lack of ventilators, record unemployment, the weakest members of society getting the brunt of everything. 

By the time that class starts, she feels a perfect cocktail of sadness and anger over Helena, despair at the state of the world, and a pressing guilt for feeling anything about Helena when people are getting sick and dying and Myka is absolutely fine, all things considered.

When she starts the class, the first thing she hears is, “where’s your hot British girlfriend, Professor Bering?”

Abigail is one of the only freshmen who actually does the reading and talks in class. She’s normally one of Myka’s favorites, but right now, she wants to throttle her. She grits her teeth.

“If by hot British girlfriend, you mean Mary Shelley, then she is doing just great.”

“That’s obviously not what I meant.” 

Myka sighs. “Did you finish _Frankenstien?”_

“Yeah, it’s good and all, but a story of a scientist trying and failing to change science itself isn’t nearly as fun as speculating about my favorite professor’s dating life.”

“Smooth, Abigail. Can you unpack that first part?”

Abigail rolls her eyes, but then begrudgingly offers a well thought out analysis about ego and science and disease.

Myka can’t help but smile, despite it all. She loves teaching, she really does, even over video conferences when the students are determined to change the course of their conversation. She suddenly feels a pang for Helena, a moment of understanding. If someone had told her she wouldn’t be teaching anymore, she would also probably say something dumb and run out. For the first time since Helena left, a bit of hope sparks in Myka that maybe this afternoon didn’t signify the end of it all. 

Through the walls, she hears the sounds of the back door being opening, Helena returning. It takes an embarrassingly large amount of willpower for Myka’s eyes to stay focused on the screen rather than to flick to her door. But she maintains some air of professionalism, for this rare moment when these students are actually discussing the reading. No hope, no longing, is going to distract her from that. 

However, Helena breathlessly and loudly opening her bedroom door might distract her from that. Myka’s gaze is torn from her screen to see the portrait of Helena, hair windswept, lips parted, standing in her doorway. 

“Myka,” she says, “please listen to me.”

The discussion of her class ceases, save Abigail’s excited whisper of, “is that her?”

“Helena, I’m-” she starts, and is unable to finish, because Helena takes three swift longs steps to Myka’s desk, grabs her face in both hands and kisses her. 

It feels like how it’s always felt, like they’ve been kissing for much longer than a few days, like Helena’s mouth was specifically designed for Myka’s. It also feels different, there’s a sureness to Helena’s movements, they’re purposeful with a hint of desperation. Myka wants to give into it, for it to never stop. She wants Helena's lips to kiss away every doubt that had been plaguing her mind for the last few hours. 

But she can’t. Because she is probably being the most unprofessional she has been in her entire career, practically making out with another woman in front of 50 small screens of college freshmen. She pulls away from Helena, breathlessly, and finally finishes her sentence. 

“-teaching a class right now.”

She’s greeted by cheers and wolf-whistles from her computer screen, as a blush crawls from her chest up to her hairline. Helena, frustratingly, seems unshaken. She has an absolutely filthy grin on her face as she looks from Myka back to the students. 

“Do forgive me,” she says in a voice that sounds the opposite of sorry, “I was simply overcome with my love of _Frankenstein._ ”

She flashes a smile to the students, then walks back to the door, throwing a wink over her shoulder to Myka. Myka could slaughter her. But she can’t help the rising feeling of elation in her chest. 

"Can we unpack _that,_ Professor Bering?”

When her class finally ends, after Myka pleading with them to talk about the book, and a disjointed attempt of 50 separated students to chant “hot British girlfriend,” Myka lets out a long breath. She shuts her laptop, tries to ease the anxiety and hope fighting for real estate in her gut, and walks into the living room.

Helena is lying down on the couch, on _their_ couch, looking down at her own worn copy of _Frankenstein_. Myka can’t help but smile at the sight, despite it all.

“Nice book,” she says, trying to sound casual.

Helena gives a small smile and puts down the book. 

“I am sorry for the disturbance.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think that was the most engaged Freshman seminar I’ve ever taught.”

“Then I’m not sorry." Her smile disappears. "I am though, dreadfully sorry for earlier.”

Myka has to stop herself from letting out a reactionary, “it’s fine.” It’s not really fine, the fact that a few small sentences sent Myka into a hours-long spiral. So she doesn’t say anything. 

“Will you come sit with me?” Helena asks. 

Myka nods, and steps over to the couch. She sits on the edge, gingerly, until she feels the tug of Helena's arms on her waist and she’s being pulled down onto the couch, into the crook of Helena’s arm. It’s a few minutes of lying there and breathing before Helena says anything. 

“I talked about being trapped before, to Arthur. It was in the heat of anger and I didn't mean to… Being trapped has somewhat become a constant in my life, you see. I felt trapped by overbearing parents, trapped by academia, so trapped I broke free with a series of poor decisions that led to being trapped by a pregnancy, a child. And as soon as-” her voice breaks for a moment, and Myka instinctively reaches out a hand to comfort her, to hold her. Helena leans into her.

“As soon as I realized,” she continues, voice raw, “that I was not, in fact, trapped by Christina, that I was set free by her, there was a tragedy and I became trapped by the accident, by the loss, by grief. I was trapped by the desire for pain, for destruction for a long time. I’m happy you did not know me then, Myka, I was… well, I was trapped.

"I was rescued from that, from that crushing entrapment of anger and loneliness by my brother, by some friends including your Steve, by my career. Time has a habit of going on. But so does entrapment. I felt that Charles’ hospitality trapped me, Oxford, with its stone walls and its history trapped me, memories trapped me. So I chose. Opted for wide open spaces, for anywhere in America that would give me a position. And I got a response from Arthur Neilson.”

Myka feels her grip tighten at Helena, understanding washing over her. 

“Charles told me not to go, you know. An international flight last month was not wise. But I wished to no longer be trapped. I thought I would find freedom in the mountains, the land, a place where no one knew my past. But that didn’t happen.”

She looks down. Myka knows what’s next. It’s the “trapped in Colorado” part. The fact that they have no escape. 

“Instead, I found freedom in you, Myka Bering.”

Myka blinks. She must have misheard.

“What?” 

“I understand it’s all quite ironic; that when we are all literally trapped, I finally feel free. But, so it goes.”

She turns to Myka now, eyes bright and captivating. 

“I do feel free with you, Myka, in a way I haven’t felt since before it all. And it scared me. It still scares me, this impending feeling of contentment that’s crept up over these few weeks. I tried to blame it on forced confinement, or the prospect of this new job, but when that was taken from me, I realized it was you. I haven’t let myself be vulnerable in nearly a decade now, so it was easier to storm out, you see. But I took a long walk and I kept thinking about you, and fearing I’d ruined everything, and missing you for Christ’s sake, which is absolutely ridiculous, to miss the one you are confined with, but there I was.”

Myka realizes Helena’s rambling. Perfect, cool, Helena Wells is rambling because of her feelings for _her_ , awkward, bumbling Myka Bering. Myka thinks her chest will explode because of this woman, baring her soul, here on this very couch in their shared living room. 

For an English Professor, Myka has never been very good at using her words. Certainly not in the same way Helena just was. So she does the only thing she can, brings a hand up to Helena’s face, brushes the hint of a tear away, and kisses her. It isn’t like the first kiss they had on this couch, full of newness and wanting. It’s soft and full of promises, full of unspoken intimacies. 

She comes away breathless, smiling, looking down on Helena, who gazes back at her with the same intensity of the words she just spoke. Myka doesn’t think she will ever get tired of those eyes, the way they pierce her. 

“So I’m forgiven, I presume?” There’s a tease in Helena’s voice, a lilt back in it, a crinkle in her eye. 

It makes Myka melt. She loves that lilt, loves the humor that Helena brings out in her, loves the way her eyes shine at Myka, like they’re doing just now. She loves the way her eyes go serious sometimes, how her voice can be hard and sure as well as light and teasing. She loves, oh God, she loves Helena. She is in love with a woman who she has known for three weeks. 

Against all odds, Myka starts laughing. She can’t help herself. It’s the absurdity of the situation. The fact that she had wanted to hate the idea of Helena before she met her, the fact that they were forced by such large and external factors to be in each other's company, and because of that, because of it all, Myka is stupidly, absurdly, in love with her. 

“Are you quite alright?” Helena asked, clearly confused by Myka’s outburst. 

“Not at all,” Myka says with a grin, and leans down to kiss her again and again and again. 

***

_Wassup it’s Claudia, leave a message. Or just text me, it's 2020, come on._

So you did update your voicemail, even though it’s apparently irrelevant, huh? I was just calling to see if you had that test you made a while back for roommate compatibility. It came up with Helena and we were joking about it, and I thought it would be fun to take it with her, you know? Obviously it won’t be 92%, but there are maybe a couple factors that are… different from when you and I lived together. Anyway, let me know if you still have it! Hope you’re having fun with Todd, miss you!

**April 3, 8:13pm**

CD: omg u totally boned her  
MB: Claudia.  
CD: that’s not a no  
MB: Claudia!  
CD: omg u TOTALLY BONED  
MB: You are 12.  
CD: and YOU are getting laid by the hot british roommate   
CD: wow this is huge  
CD: this means i win  
MB: You win what?  
CD: SO YOU ADMIT IT

**April 3, 8:15pm**

CD: you both owe me 20 bucks  
PL: they boned???? damn i had next week  
SJ: Actually, you both owe me $20.  
CD: what, no i had first week of april  
SJ: But I had March...  
PL: no freaking way  
SJ: Yuuup, HG told me they hooked up last week. As the only one who knows both of them, I've always had this one in the bag.   
CD: i can’t believe hg told you before myka told us  
PL: makes you wonder who your real friends are  
SJ: Pay up!!!

 **Claudia Donovan paid Steve Jinks**  
British Flag emoji, house emoji, two women holding hands emoji

 **Peter Lattimer paid Steve Jinks**  
Eggplant emoji, water droplets emoji, tongue emoji, heart emoji

**April 4, 4:21pm.  
From: Abigail Cho <a.cho@colorado.edu>  
To: Myka Bering <m.bering@colorado.edu>  
Subject: Essay  
Attachment: A Monster of our Own Making: An Analysis of the American Response to COVID-19 Told Through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.doc**

Hey Prof. Bering!!

Here is my Frankenstein essay, as requested. If you tell anyone I completed it on a Saturday afternoon, a whole week before it’s due, I’ll deny it. The things boredom make us do, right? 

Hope you and the hot British girlfriend are having a lovely time, by the way. Does she know that we all heard her yelling from the other room during class yesterday? I think you should not tell her, so we can keep hearing fun British things like, “should I pick up scones, love?” during class. It’s fun. 

ALSO I was looking at summer courses and I saw a 201 British Lit Class that’s taught by a Helena Wells? That wouldn’t happen to be the same Helena as “thank you for the scones, Helena, I’m teaching right now Helena, I love you Helena,” would it?? Anyway I’m signing up, and if she’s not your Hot British Girlfriend, I’m going to reconsider this English major thing.

Hope you and the HBG have a good weekend!

Xoxo

Abigail

PS: This might be odd to add, but it’s been a really shitty few weeks, and watching your weird romantic life unfold has been one of the few highlights. So thanks, I guess, for making things a little more bearable. 


End file.
